Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Legacy? What legacy? The runaway success of the Cultural Olympiad and the London 2012 Festival looked set to prove to everyone that the UK's arts scene is second to none. But that's meaningless without the follow-up of lasting care and attention at grass-roots level - ie, in education. And as our dear government - specifically Michael Gove, the education minister - announces further plans for the reform of the schooling system, this time replacing GCSEs with something called the EBac, creativity and the arts are not just out in the cold, but nowhere to be seen.

Of course, the government has already excised state funding in its entirety from all arts further education in England, including from all the music colleges. While many of us have felt it best to give the directors of those institutions the space and privacy to negotiate behind the scenes for the most positive outcome possible, I can't help feeling we should have yelled a bit more about it from the start. To trumpet the excellence of British arts during the Olympics, while simultaneously removing the hope of training for anyone who can't access the funds to pay for it, represents mendacious hypocrisy at its zenith.

The Incorporated Society of Musicians has produced a strong response to the omission of arts and creativity from the EBac, pointing out that in the end it's the UK economy that's going to suffer. Here's the ISM's statement.

Missed
opportunity for the economy as Government forgets the Olympics lessons

The
Incorporated Society of Musicians (ISM) – the UK’s professional body for music
teachers, performers and composers – has condemned the proposals for GCSE
reform which threaten to damage not just our children’s education but also our
economy.

Having
criticised the English Baccalaureate (EBac) in its original incarnation, the
ISM is even more concerned at the present proposals which will increase
pressure on pupils to study the six areas of maths, English, sciences,
languages and humanities with no creative subjects at all being present.

Deborah
Annetts, Chief Executive of the ISM, said:

‘These
proposals represent a missed opportunity to reform our education system.
Michael Gove will ensure with these so-called reforms that the UK loses its
competitive edge in the fields in which we are world class. It is as if the
Olympics never happened. Design – gone, technology – gone, music – gone.

‘This
short sighted, wholesale attack on secondary music education will emasculate
not only our world class music education system but also our entire creative
economy which is estimated as contributing up to 10% of our GDP.

‘In
its present form, intellectual and rigorous subjects like music are nowhere to
be seen in the EBac offer. In its present form, the CBI, Creative Industries
Council, ISM and Cultural Learning Alliance are all seeking reform of the EBac
to include at least some of what the UK economy is good at: creativity and
culture.’

Diana
Johnson, Vice-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Music Education
and a former education minister said:

‘The
Secretary of State for Education has clearly forgotten all his warm words about
music education in the past to launch an assault on music in secondary schools.
Music education in the UK is world class, contributing hugely to our economy.
The absence of music and any other creative or innovative subject from the EBac
will further undermine the UK's progress in some of the growth generating
industries of the future. We just saw Olympic and Paralympic closing ceremonies
showing off some of the best of British music, design and creativity. The
Government should at least include music in the English Baccalaureate.’

Fact checker: Gaps in the Secretary of
State’s statement

1. In his statement to Parliament,
whilst warning that the previous ‘examination system [had] narrowed the
curriculum’ Mr Gove continued to promote the EBac, a course which is causing
schools to drop music and other creative and cultural subjects.

2. Whilst claiming that higher education
providers back the English Baccalaureate, Mr Gove forgot to mention that advice
from the Russell Group only refers to post-16 study, not pre-16 study, and
forgot to mention some Universities – like Trinity College Cambridge – make
their own list of rigorous subjects which include music.

3.
Whilst claiming that the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) had backed
‘widespread view among business that we needed to reform GCSEs’ Mr Gove forgot
to mention that the CBI has explicitly criticised the EBac in its present form
for omitting creative and technical subjects from the EBac.

Deborah
concluded:

‘This Government was formed with the claim that they
knew how to get the economy moving, yesterday, they proved that this was not
the case. You would be forgiven for forgetting that the Olympics, Cultural
Olympiad and Opening and Closing ceremonies had just taken place. You could be
forgiven for missing out the importance of creativity, technology and the UK’s
leading position in the music industry to our economy.’

Saturday, September 08, 2012

You'd think the presence of Nicola Benedetti and Joseph Calleja would be musical Olympics enough, but there's an extra dimension to tonight's Last Night of the Proms. Look who's coming to listen.

Last Night of the Proms welcomes Team GB and ParalympicsGB to celebrate the end

of an extraordinary summer

Saturday 8 September 2012

The
BBC Proms is delighted to announce that athletes from Team GB and
ParalympicsGB will be joining the Last Night festivities at the Royal
Albert Hall and in Hyde Park tomorrow evening. Following an invitation
from BBC Proms Director Roger Wright to all that took part in this
summer’s Games, the Proms is delighted to welcome over 80 athletes to
the Last Night celebrations.

In keeping with the return of Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea-Songs
in the traditional second half of the Royal Albert Hall concert (live
on BBC One), the BBC Proms is thrilled to be joined in the hall by
rulers of the waves themselves: Team GB Gold medal winners in the Mens
Coxless Fours Alex Gregor, Tom James MBE and Pete Reed; Silver medallist
in the Lightweight Mens Double Sculls Zac Purchase MBE and the complete
ParalympicGB Mixed Coxed Fours Gold medal winners David Smith, James
Roe, Naomi Riches, Pam Relph and Lily van den Broecke (cox).

Last night at the Vienna Philharmonic, the front-section Promenaders did their best to get into the spirit of the LNOTP by doing a few knee-bends to the encore, J Strauss's waltz Voices of Spring. Only a few, though. For a nuanced write-up of the concert I'm going to refer you to the sterling Boulezian.

As for tonight, fabulous to know that 900-carat Calleja will be beamed out to the entire world. So everyone can hear that the golden age of the Tenor Voice has by no means been and gone. It's alive and well and flying out fresh from Malta. Here's an extract from his new album, Be My Love - a tribute to Mario Lanza. Actually he leaves Lanza standing. (Be my love? Any time, Joe. Any time.)

Saturday, May 26, 2012

...GO! Yet the identity of the extreme cultural bonanza that is the London 2012 Festival is anything but clear. I've tried to unravel it all in today's Independent, but when I tried to draw a Venn Diagram it ended up looking like a psychedelic Mickey Mouse. We probably won't see the likes of this festival again, though. Its existence must not be used as an excuse to relegate the arts, thereafter, to the austerity-bound sidelines. They should always be this central to a civilised society.

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Music, dance and writing in London, UK. Jessica writes for The Independent and numerous other publications. Author of biographies, novels, plays, libretti. Editor of The Amati Magazine. "Everything she writes is worth reading" - The Times..."Dazzling perceptiveness" - Joanna Lumley on Songs of Triumphant Love...
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JESSICA DUCHEN TALKS, CONCERTS & PLAYS

28 July, afternoon performance (time tbc)
Fishguard Festival, Wales
I’m teaming up with the distinguished British pianist Peter Donohoe, artistic director of the Fishguard Festival, for a special performance of Alicia’s Gift, the concert of the novel. More info here

20 February 2016, 2pm, WIGMORE HALL: ALICIA'S GIFT, The Concert of the Novel, with Viv McLean (piano) and me (narrator). That's right. The Wigmore Hall. The day will also include a panel discussion about child prodigies, which I'm chairing. More details soon.